The present dissertation focuses on the grotesque in contemporary photography within the current panorama, and in particular on the photographic work of Susanne Themlitz in a desire to fill an existing gap in the theorization of specific contents. The photographic images of this Portuguese artist, who operate on the formless as a specific genre of the grotesque, constituting the subject of study of this thesis. Considering the grotesque as a transversal and timeless theme in the history of humanity which represents a transgressional form of expressing human obsessions, such as anxieties, fears and traumas of society in general, it invariably expresses a sense of transgression and subversion to the norm. Establishing a reference to the surrealist photographic lexicon, its psychic automatism and interior displays, as well as the photographic work of certain emblematic figures and significant contemporary images, one can register affinities with different practices, strategies and concepts. Aspects like the formless, the duality, the transgression, the distortion between reality and fiction and the merging of territories apply. The "formless body" is reinvented and reflected presenting a bifurcated and diffuse identity of hybrid nature in constant transformation. Based on the fragility of the human condition and its transitory situation, the artist uses new strategies to approach the real through the latest digital tools in the manipulation of her hybrid characters. Her grotesque creatures rehearse notions of territoriality and inner landscape enticing us to cut through the barriers existing between human and animal. The Deleuzian concept of "becoming animal" dehumanizes the human body, animalizes it, mapping uncharted territories.
Human nature when out of balance prompts and interrogates us influencing the way we intuit our own human condition with respect to the contemporaneity reflecting simultaneously a phenomenological, plastic, mental, metaphorical, and above all, a non-linear era. One has to stop and think of photography as a platform for projection and contamination questioning certainties, rethinking the great issues of the history of our time by stimulating the imaginary in an exercise of content reflection.